9 green stocks profiting from smart grid development

USA and China each must rapidly develop new smart grid electricity infrastructure

Publicly-listed technology stocks benefiting from development of USA smart grid electricity transmission infrastructure:

Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI)

EnerNoc (NASDAQ: ENOC)

Comverge (NASDAQ: COMV)

General Electric (NYSE: GE)

Siemens (NYSE: SI)

Honeywell (NYSE: HON)

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO)

ITC Holdings (NYSE: ITC)

ABB (NYSE: ABB)



3rd annual China SmartGrid Forum - September 2011

The 3rd Annual China Smart Grid Forum 2011 will be held in Sept in Shanghai

China has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest energy user, according to Paris-based International Energy Agency. As a rapid growing China’s GDP, it will continue to drive up the domestic energy consumption. The renewables, such as nuclear, wind and solar energy are no doubt seen as the favorable means to complement the energy shortage. A Stronger and Smarter Grid in China will pave the road of the renewables utilization and raise energy efficiency to cut emissions.

Grid is the world’s most complex man-made systems, information, mass, control complex, which also determines the different national conditions, the country’s development direction and focus of the smart grid are also different. In China, strong smart grid is primarily a strong grid, whose extra-high voltage technology has core characteristics including long distance, high capacity and low loss efficiency. But “should be ’strong’ and ’smart’ the advantages of a collection in one person.” This view is being more recognized and accepted. UHV grid as the backbone, with coordinated development of subordinate grids at all levels and support of IT & telecommunication platform, featured by IT-based, interactive and automated.

Strong and Smart are two basic requirements for modern power grid development. Strong is the basis and smart is the key. Combination of strong grid structure and grid smartness is the feature of describing modern power grid development by integral and systematic means. Furthermore, the end-users and distribution networks in China are not as mature as most developed countries, and the penetration rate of small-scale renewables are relatively low at the moment. In fact, growth of renewable energy in the country is primarily driven by large-scale projects that do not directly connected to end-users. Given these conditions, it is expected that initial stages of the Chinese smart grid plan will focus on the ability of controlling bulk electricity transfer efficiently, and then moves towards end-users and services integration in the next stages when the users are becoming more ready.

At the same time, the second stage of China’s Smart Grid plan, from 2011 to 2015, not only focus on accelerating UHV, urban and rural grids construction, but also establishing the basic framework for smart grid operation control and interaction, achieving the projected advancements in technology and equipment production, mass deployment. For example, in China 'smart grid', are estimated to be a nearly $100 billion opportunity over the next five years. With total power capacity set to reach 1,430 gigawatt by 2015 from 874 gigawatt at the start of 2010, China has to figure out how to bring trillions of kilowatt hours of power to more than a billion customers, sometimes over very long distances.

Smart-grid technology brings power grids into the telecommunications age, connecting "smart meters" in households and businesses to central monitoring systems capable of detecting and redressing outages or overloads in an instant.

The installation of smart meters alone will be worth $3.1 billion in 2011, up from $2.4 billion this year, according to estimates by the China Electricity Council -- and foreign firms are already looking to supply components, control and automation systems, and know-how.

With this mind, the CDMC Smart Grid Series Forum, as a professional and unparallel communication platform, concentrates on supporting an intelligent network and a global vision to our high-level worldwide industrial partners for three year. The 3rd Annual Smart Grid Forum China Focus 2011 (Sep. 14th -16th 2011) will bring industry thought leaders and a focused group of audience together to discuss the policy & the regulatory landscape, smart grid standardization, customer-side issues (billing, metering & CRM), ICT, smart distribution and smart integration of renewables.

Smart Meters energizing Ontario utilities, enabling conservation and time shifting

The following article appeared in The Toronto Star on page B2, Monday May 18, 2009:

Future of Residential Power Management

by TYLER HAMILTON, Toronto Star 

More than 200 households in Milton got to test drive the future of power management last year and the results show that homeowners, given the right tools and motivations, are more than capable of conserving energy.

The pilot project, conducted between July 2007 and Sept. 2008, was a collaboration between Milton Hydro, Direct Energy and Bell Canada. Households were given the ability to monitor their energy use through the Internet, as well as through BlackBerry-like devices, and to remotely control the lighting and operation of appliances in their homes.

An easy-to-use Web interface, designed by Toronto-based Lixar SRS, gave them a detailed view of how much electricity individual appliances were using at any point in time.

The results showed that one in 10 households given the control used 16 per cent less electricity over 12 months and 18 per cent less during peak periods.

Just 10 per cent of participants achieved the higher savings, which could be interpreted as a poor result. But the point of the pilot was to show what could be done, not necessarily what's likely to be done today.

The challenge now is to refine the technology alongside the introduction of energy conservation programs and policies that drive behavioural change.

Change is coming, and local utilities seem energized by the opportunity. Ontario passed its Green Energy Act last week, making conservation a priority as the province evolves its electricity system.

Also last week, Toronto Hydro announced that its first 10,000 residential customers will get shifted on June 1 to time-of-use pricing now that a substantial number of GTA homes have a smart meter.

The utility hopes to have all single-family homes on the new pricing by year's end, and since peak pricing is more than double off-peak pricing, you can bet that over time households will desire, if not demand, more control over their power consumption.

Energy management is also a major component of Burlington Hydro's GridSmartCity demonstration project, announced last week. Company president David Collie says local utilities are realizing that their businesses are no longer just about pushing electrons to homes. Utilities are morphing into multi-faceted energy companies that can influence change in a community, and enabling conservation is now a big part of the job.

There still exists, however, some skepticism in the market. Some energy executives downplay the new high-tech tools that give homeowners more control.

All the bells and whistles are overkill, they argue, adding that most people don't have the time to monitor their energy use or participate in demand-response programs.

There's an element of truth there, but only for those stuck in the present.

Don't believe it? Then ask yourself why Internet giant Google announced in February that it was entering the residential energy-management market with prototype software called PowerMeter? The software, which is expected to be distributed for free, offers the same kind of feedback on power use that homeowners got from the Milton Hydro trial using Lixar SRS's technology.

Google has also teamed up with General Electric on smart grid development.

It's about more than simply knowing how much power your home or an individual appliance is consuming. It's about tracking and analyzing historical use.

You can't improve it if you can't measure it.

Full TheStar.com Business article on smart meters, Ontario Hydro and residential energy management